I’m just going to go straight in for the kill with this one: why is no one talking about the rape of the Prime Minister in Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror?
For those not in the know, Charlie Brooker has written a series of 3 hour-long TV features under the title of ‘Black Mirror’. Each explores the implications and effects of a society that is increasingly reliant upon and obsessed with technology and online social media.
Given Charlie Brooker’s involvement the series is of course going to be dark, and we all knew that he was going to make some pretty sharp observations. But the big question to emerge from the first episode for me doesn’t seem to be the same one that has struck everyone else.
The first episode, The National Anthem, sees the fictional Princess Susannah kidnapped and held for ransom. The ransom demand is made via Youtube, spread via Twitter and viewed by thousands before coming to the attention of government officials and the police, and it continues to be reposted by members of the public faster than it can be taken down. This means that within hours of Princess Susannah’s video being posted the whole country knows that the Prime Minister must have full penetrative sex with a pig on live TV in order to guarantee her release.
Watching the programme you are torn between the drama of a kidnap plot and the dark, dark do-I-look/don’t-I/do-I-laugh/don’t-I act of bestiality. Everyone else I know was laughing their heads of at this, imaging how hilarious and how just it would be if our Mr. Cameron or Mr. Clegg found themselves being blackmailed into shagging a farmyard animal.
But what if it were his wife? If the ransom video had been released: “Prime Minister, your wife must shag this pig on live television or I’m gonna have my head chopped off” the story would have been much different. Blackmailing or coercing a person into having sex is rape. If you have no free will to make the decision to have sex, or at least a situation is created by the rapist to make you believe that you has no choice but to have sex then it is rape. The Prime Minister in Black Mirror, as far as I’m concerned, was raped.
He was walked into the TV studio, handed viagra and then, forced by the belief that an innocent person would die if he refused, cried as he had sex with a pig.
Spot the difference between that and any of the following scenarios:
“If you don’t have sex with me then I’m going to kill your mum/friend/partner/child/work colleague/neighbour…”
“If you don’t suck me off then I’m going to blow up that bus full of people.”
“If you don’t agree to have sex with me then I am going to fail all of your coursework.”
So do we agree now that he was raped?
But why has no one been talking about this? The only criticism of the programme that I have come across in the last few weeks is from people complaining about the rape of the pig. That is, of course, a valid complaint to have, and it is not something that should be made light of. However, I am deeply concerned that no-one acknowledges the rape of the PM. Is it because there was no gun held to his head, or is it because he is a man?
The idea of men being raped, but not anally, is not often discussed – ‘After all, if they really don’t want to do it then they wouldn’t have a hard on, surely?‘ – but sex by force isn’t always that clear, as the above scenarios I have suggested illustrate. Men can be raped too and, while I usually really like your stuff Charlie Brooker, it’s just not funny.
I AM MY OWN WIFE. 